Twenty-five ways to tweet the convention

Chris Wilson

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The Signal•September 4, 2012

Unlike domain names, hashtags on Twitter aren't owned by anyone, so it's common to see a trend originate with one group and then be co-opted by another. We saw this tug-of-war today over the hashtag #DNCin4Words, which attracted contributions from both supporters and detractors of President Barack Obama.

Below are the top 25 most popular entries among 18,178 that the Signal was able to parse from the Twitter data feed, as determined by those that were either highly retweeted or so obvious that multiple people came up with them. As you see, there's a mix of negative or sarcastic slogans along with a handful of what appear to be genuinely positive ones.

Unfortunately, the Signal's Twitter analysis engines didn't quite pick up this tag soon enough to determine who started it. The analytics firm Topsy first registered it around 8 p.m. ET yesterday, but the Twitter API does not allow searches past a certain point. As these things go, however, it matters far less who started it than who stole the reins.